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Noctua 140mm/150mm Case Fan Roundup Review

Testing:

These latest Noctua fans will be tested by comparing them with each other, as well as to a Noctua NF-P14 fan on a XSPC 140mm Watercooling Radiator in pull configuration, cooling only a single watercooled GTX 690. Testing will include a comparison of fans running at 100% fan speeds, as well as using the L.N.A and U.L.N.A. fan adapters. All hardware and settings will remain the same throughout each test. Ambient temperatures were 22.2°C during testing.

Radiator: XSPC 140mm

Pump: Swiftech MCP655-B

Reservoir: XSPC Dual 5.25” Reservoir for One Laing D5

Video Cards: EVGA GTX 690 4GB with a XSPC waterblock

Comparison Fan:

Noctua NF-P14

Testing:

Lower = Better

For testing, I ran Unigine Heaven 2.1 for two full benchmark cycles, waited 15 minutes, and then ran two full cycles again before switching to the next fan. I would wait another 15 minutes to let the system cool back down and then measure the idle temperatures before running the same tests on the next fan. I took the highest GPU Core temperature from the GTX 690 from both tests as the final result.

There wasn't any variation in the temperature results between the NF-P14 and the NF-A14 FLX fan. The surprise results came from the NF-A15 PWM, which wasn’t marketed for being used on watercooling radiators. Due to the 120mm mounting holes, I was only able to attach it to the radiator by using tape on each side. It cooled 1 °C better than the NF-P14 and NF-A14 FLX at 100% speed, and a whopping 3 °C better when using the L.N.A. adapter than the NF-P14 or the NF-A14 FLX also using the L.N.A. adapter.

Unfortunately, the NF-A14 ULN could not handle cooling the GTX 690 by itself. The high temperatures would cause the GTX 690 to lock up and I would have to restart the system to let it cool off. I repeated using it multiple times, and the results were the same. This didn’t happen with the NF-A14 FLX with the U.L.N.A. adapter, which was only 900RPMs to the NF-A14 ULN’s 800RPMs.

During testing, I did notice that the NF-A14's and NF-A15 were quieter than the NF-P14 fan in terms of vortex fan noise.